Coupled with our lovely deputy editor Louise Fordham taking the prize for HR Technology Journalist of the Year, it was certainly a night of celebration for us here at EB Towers.

As a team, I have a feeling that we will be basking in the glow of these awards for quite some time to come.

But, alongside how much these awards mean to us personally, the recognition of the team’s achievements by colleagues both in our wider business, as well as more widely in the industry, really brought home to me just how powerful recognition can be.

Realising that what you spend your days working on is actually being noticed and appreciated really helps to give it a greater sense of purpose.

Simply feeling, as I’ve no doubt all too many employees do, that they are striving to carry out their role to the best of their ability but receiving little or no recognition of this must be close to soul destroying at times. After all, numerous studies over the years have consistently demonstrated the link between recognition, performance and engagement.

No matter how much job satisfaction and personal development an individual gets from their role, it simply isn’t sustainable or reasonable to expect them to remain engaged and productive if they don’t receive any form of recognition from their manager or peers.